Kiesel, a 17-year-old junior at Gibson Southern High School, reckons she has been coming to the Right to Life of Southwest Indiana's annual spring banquet since she was seven. She has attended two Marches for Life in Washington, D.C., and eagerly awaits her third. Kiesel's Facebook page's primary photo shows her and a friend sporting wide smiles and holding anti-abortion signs.

Standing among more than 2,000 others who showed up for Thursday night's Right to Life dinner at The Old National Events Plaza, the bubbly teenager recited a mantra she has been hearing throughout her life growing up in Haubstadt.

"I grew up as one of six, so I've always thought that life is very important," Kiesel said. "It might be inconvenient for (women seeking abortions), but no one has the right to kill a child, or any life. Adoption is definitely a better option."

Ellie is the daughter of Les Kiesel, past president of Life Choices Maternity & Youth Home Inc., an Evansville-based non-profit that says its mission is to "prepare pregnant and other at-risk teen girls to become self-sufficient and valued community members."

The organization placed an ad in Right to Life of Southwest Indiana's dinner program stating that women "choosing to carry their babies to term should be supported in that decision."

Over the years Ellie Kiesel has forged friendships with homeschoolers, fellow Students for Life members and a variety of Catholic priests, deacons and anti-abortion activists. She's a member of a high school group that promotes abstinence.

The teenager's ever-present smile did not fade when a reporter asked whether her world leaves room for her to hear contrary views.

"It's definitely a touchy subject around some friends," she said, elaborating on the exceptions her friends envision making abortion acceptable. But to Kiesel, any solution to an unwanted pregnancy involving a dead body is unacceptable.

"Abortion is wrong," she said. "God created life. No one has a right to kill."

Tom Ludlam is much older at 86, but the courtly Newburgh resident also has lived his life in an environment that nurtures "pro-life" views. Ludlam comes by his views so naturally, in fact, that he can't rightly remember when he developed the notion that abortion is wrong.

Long retired from his job as a buyer for Whirlpool Corp., Ludlam, a widower, has been turning out for Right to Life of Southwest Indiana's yearly dinner for the better part of two decades.

But he struggled to articulate how and when he decided that he had to fight abortion. That view is "inborn," he said at first -- a sense of justice that sprung up naturally.

"Just because that's what I believe in," Ludlam offered. "I think it's the most important thing that we respect life and how it exists and why it exists."

But Ludlam wasn't born feeling that way. Did he remember his earliest anti-abortion influences? Was it his parents?

"It wasn't so much folks; it was just knowing right from wrong," he said. "I respect life, and I think it's God's work, not ours — and it shouldn't be ours to take away."

Ludlam talks about the issues of the day with his buddies in the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic-based fraternal organization. He doesn't get much guff for his view that abortion cannot be sanctioned by a civilized society.

"There's always little differences of opinion, but for the most part yes, we all are in agreement with the sanctity of life," he said.